Investigation into Broadband Outage

Published onsdag 6 maj 2009 kl 09.42

The Swedish Post and Telecom Agency is launching an investigation into Tuesday evening’s crash of much of Sweden’s cable TV system.

Just before 8:00 PM local time Tuesday a power surge caused by lightning knocked out the services of ComHem, the country’s largest cable provider. Around 800,000 of ComHem’s 1.8 million subscriber households lost their television, along with online telephone and Internet broadband services.

ComHem’s own website was also brought down by the outage. It took around two hours or more before services were restored.

The Postal and Telecom agency is investigating to ensure that such a breakdown can’t happen again. Many subscribers who have switched from regular telephone service to Internet connections couldn’t reach emergency numbers.

The agency’s head of network security, Anders Johansson, says it’s important that households have access to television, which is a primary source of communications in case of crises.

Modern society is much more dependent on digital services, Johansson says, than just five or ten years ago.

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